


Repeats Itself

by MaryPSue



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen, Past Character Death, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 13:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7535350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Dipper Pines saw his great-uncle cry, it was only because Stan thought he was alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repeats Itself

The first time Dipper Pines saw his great-uncle cry, it was only because Stan thought he was alone.

Dipper knew Stan thought he was alone, because he’d watched. All day, Dipper had been trailing around the Shack, mostly following Mabel, watching as everyone picked themselves up and tried to put themselves back together after the apocalypse-that-wasn’t. Yesterday, he’d done everything he could think of to get their attention, screaming until the remaining windows cracked, but only Mabel had shown even the faintest signs of noticing and even she’d been persuaded she was imagining things. But over the long night that followed, the panic had worn away and reality had started to sink in, leaving Dipper stunned into numbness and barely able to float aimlessly after Mabel.  Even the prospect of spending forever as a disembodied wisp of consciousness barely registered as a blip on his emotional radar.

It was only once Mabel was tucked into bed, one arm wrapped securely around Waddles, her sniffles having died into snores, that Dipper felt the first unpleasant jab of emotion, like pins and needles in his brain. He didn’t want to spend another long night alone with nothing but his thoughts and the bitter truth. He left Mabel curled up with Waddles only after searching the room thoroughly, making sure that the roof wasn’t going to fall in on her in the night. He’d almost lost her once, and it was once too often.

Dipper slipped down through the floor, heading for the living room. Maybe, if he was lucky, Stan would have fallen asleep with the TV on.

The TV was on, but Stan wasn’t in front of it. Dipper debated just sitting down in front of the set for a few seconds before his curiosity got the better of him. 

Stan wasn’t in his bedroom. He wasn’t in the office off the Mystery Shack. He wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t in the secret room Dipper and Mabel had fought over earlier that summer - and honestly, that surprised Dipper as much as anything, because…well, because there was a similar crystal decanter to the one in the secret room over the fireplace at home, and at New Year’s last year he and Mabel had been allowed to try a sip of the amber liquid kept in it for the midnight toast. Anything that tasted that bad had to be alcoholic, or nobody’d drink it. 

(Dipper tried not to let his train of thought veer off the tracks, crash into the ravine that thinking about his parents and his home would drag him into.)

He was getting close to just giving up in frustration and flopping down (if hovering midair could be counted as ‘flopping’) in front of the TV until the sun rose and Mabel woke up, when he remembered the one place he hadn’t checked. And sure enough, when Dipper finally got brave enough to dive headfirst through the floor (it was a deeply disconcerting feeling, watching wood and steel and insulation whiz through you and feeling nothing, and he’d had to close his eyes the first few times he’d done it and had ended up overshooting as a result), Stan was down in the basement, picking over the rubble of what had once been some kind of interdimensional portal with a look on his face that every so often curled into something a little bit like disgust and a little bit like anger.

He was muttering something to himself as he turned over shards of blackened metal and hunks of concrete in his bare hands, a quiet, constant litany that Dipper couldn’t quite make out. It took Dipper a moment to remember that no, his great-uncle wasn’t going to get grouchy and yell at Dipper for invading his personal space if Dipper moved a little closer to listen. Stan hadn’t shown any sign that he was even aware Dipper still existed all day; why would that change now?

So Dipper hovered closer - uncomfortably close, honestly, until he could count the hairs growing out of the old man’s ears and smell the sourness on his breath. Yup, definitely something alcoholic. What was he even doing down here, anyway? The portal was destroyed, whatever Bill had been planning was foiled, that much Dipper was still clinging grimly to. No matter what had happened to him, no matter what the rest of his life (his eternity? He didn’t even want to consider the possibility) was going to be like, at least the world was still in one piece. At least  _Mabel_  was still in one piece. His family were safe and - 

Oh.

Oh no.

With eerily impeccable timing, Stan chose that moment to sit back on a slab of steel that Dipper thought he remembered falling from the ceiling at some point while gravity had all been draining sideways out of the room. Stan dropped like someone had shoved him, landing on his butt on the girder with a ‘whoof’ of expelled air, and slumped forward, something clenched in both hands as he rested his elbows on his splayed knees and let his hands dangle between his legs.

There was still a faint electrical hum somewhere in the depth of the basement, Dipper realised, mostly smothered by the dust that hung thick and heavy in the air.

Stan let out a long, long sigh, and then a groan, one of the heartfelt ones that he made when Mabel tried to lever him out of his chair to do unicorn yoga or whatever with her. “This is stupid,” he said, out loud, and for one wild moment Dipper thought that Stan was actually talking to him, actually looking up at him, before he realised Stan’s eyes were focused somewhere behind his chest. “You’re gettin’ too old to pull these kinds of all-nighters, Stan.” There was a catch in Stan’s voice, something that was trying to be a laugh but hadn’t quite managed it, and he brushed an arm across his eyes with a rueful smile. “ ‘course, what else are you gonna do? Tell your traumatised great-niece you have to leave her alone all day so you can go poke around in the dangerously unstable basement and look for her brother’s body?”

Dipper wasn’t sure he had a stomach anymore, but he felt the bottom of it drop out.

“If there even is a body,” Stan muttered, aiming a kick at a lump of concrete. “Ow. Probably vaporised the instant that thing blew. Huh. If he was  _lucky_  he mighta got sucked through before it went up.”

Dipper didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to listen to this. He hung like a marionette forgotten mid-act, dangling by his own strings, as his great-uncle ran a hand through his grey hair and managed a choked laugh. It went on and on, wet and mirthless and horrible, a sick sobbing sound that seemed both disgusted by the irony of the world and desperately, hopelessly, unsurprised. 

After what felt like a century, a millenium, a lifetime, Stan finally coughed into his hand, sparing one last glance at the thing he held crumpled in the other hand. Dipper drifted closer, just close enough to peer over Stan’s shoulder, to see the photograph from the beginning of the summer, Mabel pulling a face as Dipper held up two fingers behind her head. 

“Grunkle Stan -” Dipper started, before remembering he couldn’t be heard.

“What the hell am I gonna tell their parents,” Stan sighed, rubbing the heel of one hand against his eye. Slowly, achingly, he pushed himself to his feet, looking around the basement at the ruins of the portal, scattered across the floor.

Absently, he reached up and pressed the photo against his chest. Dipper saw Stan’s throat bob, clearly swallowing down another bout of laughter - if he could call it that - as Stan plastered on an enormous, toothy smile.

“But I almost did it,” he said, and the note of pride was like a church bell ringing in the soft silence of the basement. “I almost - it was right there - fuck, it was  _right_   _there_ , I just about had it, I nearly -”

“Grunkle Stan?” Dipper said, again, hardly caring this time whether he was heard or not, because something was wrong, something was really, really, seriously wrong. Stan was still wearing that big dumb grin and - he couldn’t be, he  _wasn’t_ , if there was one thing Dipper Pines knew beyond a shadow of a doubt about his Grunkle Stan it was that Stan never, _ever_  cried.

And yet, his eyes were shining and the weird basement light reflected blue off the tracks on his cheeks and he was still smiling but it was all wrong and now he was shaking his head, turning away, snuffling loudly into his arm hair as he dragged his arm under his nose to wipe away the snot. Stan shuffled toward the elevator, the picture still clutched close to his chest, still shaking his head as he went. He brushed by Dipper so close that Dipper could feel Stan’s shoulder pass through his foot, so hot it almost burned for the split second they intersected, and Dipper could swear he heard Stan mutter to himself, “And now I lost the kid her twin too.”

Dipper moved to follow, but the elevator doors slid shut on Stan with a too-cheery mechanical  _ding!_  

Dipper hovered in the ruins of the basement for as long as he dared, before drifting up through the floor, up to the attic.

Mabel would see him.

She  _had_  to.


End file.
